My Lords, I will not take up too much of the House’s time. I am a Covid baby—I have learned the culture of this House via screens—so I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I get the protocol incorrect, but I consider you all my noble friends. I am really struck by the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and support it wholeheartedly because I have seen the benefit of hate crime legislation and the benefit of aggravated offences on the grounds of sexuality, disability and race. It is illogical to me that that is not extended to women when it exists for every other protected characteristic.
On a personal note, this issue of sex and gender is something that I have been researching for a very long time. I am the former CEO of Stonewall—since 2019 I have been free—but I have been thinking about these issues since 1998, when, as a student at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, we were debating whether transwomen should be allowed in that women-only college. So, I am slightly a 1980s baby, but have thought about these issues for a very long time.
I am often thought to be trans. I am not, but I am often thought to be. I do not have my tie on this evening because it is going to be a long night—and if, unlike the gentlemen, I have the option to drop it, I will—but when a woman has been told for most of her adult life to accessorise, she does get attracted to the tie racks in Liberty as an option for those accessories. I experience discrimination on the grounds of my gender, sometimes on the basis of my sex—because I am a woman and perceived to be a woman—but often on the grounds of my gender, my gender identity and my gender presentation. These things are complicated; they do not lend themselves to pithy statements.
I have huge sympathy with those who have very different views from mine on trans issues and I think there is probably more that we can talk about together than what divides us. We have become caricatures of ourselves by the medium of social media and I have a huge amount of respect for the noble Baroness,
Lady Jenkin, and the work she has done around women in politics, but I know we disagree on this. I hope we can find ways to come together, but I think this amendment referring to sex and gender is wholly beneficial to women. I hope to support it, hope to see it taken back to the other place, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his support.